A journey of the mind afloat in space and time. An emotion capture. Arresting images and some great poems and lyrics.

Menu

Category Archives: Work

I worked some pretty bad jobs in my time. Weeks serving food on grotty ferries. Long days stacking shop shelves and sweeping grubby floors. Disgusting days lifting coughing patients in a chest ward, or turning geriatrics with turgid pee bags and soiled pads and all for pretty low wages, but I never complained at that.

I worked some pretty great jobs, running hard from morning to night, days gone in a blink, boxes ticked, tasks completed, a blur of achievement richly rewarded. I certainly never complained at that.

I worked a well paid job in a comfortable office with little or nothing to do. I watched the hands of the clock march slowly around the dial praying for the end of the hour, the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the year, the end of my life. I literally wished my life away. I complained about everything. I longed for a geriatric to be turned, or a floor to be swept.

That’s not work. That’s prison.

Fear and Fame; by Philip Levine

Half an hour to dress, wide rubber hip boots,
gauntlets to the elbow, a plastic helmet
like a knight’s but with a little glass window
that kept steaming over, and a respirator
to save my smoke-stained lungs. I would descend
step by slow step into the dim world
of the pickling tank and there prepare
the new solutions from the great carboys
of acids lowered to me on ropes — all from a recipe
I shared with nobody and learned from Frank O’Mera
before he went off to the bars on Vernor Highway
to drink himself to death. A gallon of hydrochloric
steaming from the wide glass mouth, a dash
of pale nitric to bubble up, sulphuric to calm,
metals for sweeteners, cleansers for salts,
until I knew the burning stew was done.
Then to climb back, step by stately step, the adventurer
returned to the ordinary blinking lights
of the swingshift at Feinberg and Breslin’s
First-Rate Plumbing and Plating with a message
from the kingdom of fire. Oddly enough
no one welcomed me back, and I’d stand
fully armored as the downpour of cold water
rained down on me and the smoking traces puddled
at my feet like so much milk and melting snow.
Then to disrobe down to my work pants and shirt,
my black street shoes and white cotton socks,
to reassume my nickname, strap on my Bulova,
screw back my wedding ring, and with tap water
gargle away the bitterness as best I could.
For fifteen minutes or more I’d sit quietly
off to the side of the world as the women
polished the tubes and fixtures to a burnished purity
hung like Christmas ornaments on the racks
pulled steadily toward the tanks I’d cooked.
Ahead lay the second cigarette, held in a shaking hand,
as I took into myself the sickening heat to quell heat,
a lunch of two Genoa salami sandwiches and Swiss cheese
on heavy peasant bread baked by my Aunt Tsipie,
and a third cigarette to kill the taste of the others.
Then to arise and dress again in the costume
of my trade for the second time that night, stiffened
by the knowledge that to descend and rise up
from the other world merely once in eight hours is half
what it takes to be known among women and men.

Just another normal evening, you think, as you board the bus in Iniscarra at the end of another sweltering day in the Irish heatwave of 2018.

July in Ireland, you can usually get relief, as the weather breaks and rain falls again once the state exams are over. Not this year. Irish Water has declared a state of emergency, hosepipe bans, asking people to ease up on the showers, baths are a big no-no.

Two sweaty and tired lads knocking off from their summer job climb onto the bus. It is not full.

Near the front is a lad who appears to be a little touched. He is singing to himself. Back from him is a good looking young girl. She is heading into Cork for a night on the tiles. Dressed to the nines. Hair and makeup all done. Black fingernail polish. She looks a bit ridiculous in broad daylight, not yet 5pm, but she will look amazing tonight in the club. For now though she must be melting in all that makeup.

Down the back is a parody of the stereotype of an American tourist. Grossly overweight, shorts and polo shirt, wearing hat and sunglasses, backpack, camera round the neck, map spread out wide over his bare knees.

The two lads settle in for the 40 minute trip to Cork. The driver guns the engine and goes into rally driving mode down the narrow winding country road.

Sadly this bus is not destined to complete the journey. In the Lee Valley a car is attempting to pull out of a side road and the Bus driver careens into it. Then the fun begins.

Instead of doing the thing required by the law, you know, stopping at the scene of an accident, the driver takes off. In dramatic style he swings up a side road and begins a madcap speed chase through the Irish countryside. Behind the poor divil in the smashed car does his best to follow, but the Bus driver has no trouble shaking off his pursuer. You see, the bus driver knows these roads, very well, as we shall see.

The bus driver pulls into a remote site where he can park the bus. He declares to his passengers “I had to leave the scene of the accident, because I would have caused a traffic jam. This bus can’t go any further, the axle is damaged. If you wait a while we will get a replacement.”

The passengers are looking around at the uninviting site surrounding them. Should they stay on the bus or wait in the parking area outside?

The man who was singing to himself at the front of the bus looks round and finds a comb on the floor. He picks it up and proffers it to the heavily made up girl. “You dropped your comb” he says.

“No” she replies “It’s not mine”.

“But you can have it” says the man.

“No thanks” she replies politely, realising that the guy is a bit special. Otherwise she would probably have flipped him off by now.

“But you have long hair” says special guy, “you would need to comb it a lot”.

Makeup girl decides to sit outside.

The guy at the back asks the bus driver “Hey, buddy, how long will we have to wait?” confirming for everyone that he is indeed an American.

The Bus Driver has no idea.

The passengers drift out into the blazing 30 degree heat of another stifling day. It is not a pretty vista. They are in some kind of area for cars to pull in. There are some large concrete blocks, the type the Council use to prevent Travelers from parking caravans and setting up an unapproved halting site. It is an unkempt, ugly site, what you might expect in an industrial city suburb, but perched out here in the countryside.

There is a field beside the pull in area. The grass is burned brown by the heatwave. In the field is a dead horse, flies buzzing lazily over the corpse.

There are two cars already in the car park. It is hard to see into one. The other contains a shirtless guy with a dog on his lap. The guy seems annoyed by the arrival of the bus.

The passengers file out and find concrete blocks to sit on. The two young lads and the girl are immediately into their smartphones, rearranging meeting times around the delay.

The two cars at the site start their engines and pull away. Silence descends. There is the song of birds, the cheeps of shrews and grasshoppers. The bus driver remains on the bus and his five passengers sit in the sun like so many marine iguanas on the rocks of the Galapagos, absorbing energy directly through their skin.

A car arrives. The passengers are hopeful. Is this some emergency response by Bus Eireann? A rapid response team to rescue stranded passengers?

The car pulls up. A woman opens the drivers door, leans out and vomits. She closes the door and pulls away. The pool of vomit remains, providing a balancing contrast to the carcass of the dead horse in the field.

The lads are looking at each other and cracking up. You could not make this up.

Another car pulls up, neatly avoiding the pool of vomit. A middle aged man steps out of the car. In his hand is a smartphone. On the smartphone they can clearly see that he has a Tinder page open. The man scans the area and looks annoyed. He pauses for no more than a minute, re-enters the car and drives away.

Now it sinks in. The shady parking area. The concrete bollards. The remoteness of the area. The lads parked up. Tinder.

The bus driver has parked them in a hookup site, and when the sun sets it is in all probability a dogging site! The bus driver found it unerringly. He has been here and more than once. If they could see what these concrete bollards have seen…….

The replacement bus arrives. It is a city bus, not the usual coach used in the countryside routes. The passengers are whisked away, leaving behind the damaged bus, the driver who fled the scene of an accident, the dead horse, the pool of vomit and the memories held by those concrete cubes.

I was back up in Dublin today to my old commuting stomping ground, just for a day. As I sailed through the City Centre on the light rail I observed the many faces of misery, the grey sad commuters shuffling to their daily grind. The hundreds of slack jawed automatons dreading another mind numbing day. It always makes me break a smile and thank my lucky stars that I enjoy my health, my work, my life.

Then, through the zombie hoard burst a vision of vitality, a young pretty woman, face a sheen of sweat, running hard to the office, with a huge smile pasted all over her face. Loving every step of her run. She was racing the Luas Red Line into the City Centre. Each time she caught the train at a stop was another mini victory.

“There” I said “I am not the only sucker for punishment”. Love life, live life, risk life, grasp it with both hands. Never wish away a day, not even a bad day. There are too few to waste. Carpe Diem.

Warning; by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
with a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick flowers in other people’s gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickle for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
nad pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Today, May 2nd, is the birthday of Alan Titchmarch who is one of the UK’s most celebrated TV gardeners and gardening authors. As an avid gardener myself I have great time for people who can turn an introspective pursuit into mainstream entertainment. This is a classic example of what I call #tainment as in #Edutainment, the blend of education and entertainment that makes education accessible. So Titchmarch is a proponent of #Gardentainment

There is a Chinese proverb which says : If you want to be occupied for a year get a job, for a decade get a wife, for a lifetime get a garden.

Paradise is derived from the old Iranian word for a walled enclosure, paridayda which described a royal palace enclosure or park. These might be hunting parks, or simply royal gardens. In any case just remember when you are ripping out your weeds by hand, it’s another day in paradise.

Titchmarch has been decorated many times with things pinned onto him by the Queen of England. So what does a celebrated gardener, TV presenter and author do to top off his life? He writes a book of poetry of course! His book is called “The Glorious Garden” which is a beautiful name for a book of poems.

Winter Garden; by Patrick Kavanagh
No flowers are here
no middle-class vanities -
only the decapitated shanks
of cabbages
and prostrate
on a miserable ridge
bean-stalks.

3 reasons to block wi-fi and phone signals to workplace bathrooms.

Many workplaces recognize the drag on work time if staff are checking in on their mobile phone to catch up on their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, What’s App etc. HR departments have introduced guidelines on use of mobile phones. Many have restricted access to wi-fi networks to business approved usage only. But with cheap data usage plans plenty of staff are still “always on” as long as they have a phone signal. Maybe it is time to monitor bathroom behavior in your business.

Productivity

It is a no-brainer that staff members who are accessing their social media feeds are taking time away from their work. In certain types of business this impact can be significant. For people working on complex data tasks an interruption to analysis can result in a 20 minute “recalibration” penalty as the staff member picks up from where they previously left off.

If you are engaged in a complex task, or something that needs a lot of concentration (think about sitting exams) a bathroom break can be a moment when you order your thoughts on how to approach the task at hand. How often have you worked out the solution to a problem by going for a walk, or eating lunch, while mulling over the problem? But if that time is spent checking social media feed the brain is distracted. Instead of working out the problem at hand the brain is leaping from photos of friends lunches to the latest on Royal Weddings.

By making the bathroom in the office a data black hole you help staff members to avoid the lure of the device in their pocket.

Health

If people are in the habit of checking their phone in the bathroom there will be implications for the spread of germs. This is not rocket science. When have you last seen someone wash their iPhone in the sink?

Think about that next time you borrow someones phone! Yuck.

Congestion

The hidden cost of phone usage in bathrooms is congestion. Staff members are taking longer to use the bathroom because they are checking the phone. Male staff members are more likely to use a stall instead of a urinal because they can scan their feed. This causes lost time, but hides a more insidious issue.

Buildings are designed around the flow of people. A building is designed with an optimal number of bathrooms for staff, based on research into usage parameters. There have to be enough toilets to handle the maximum demand periods. If each staff member is spending just a few extra seconds using the bathroom, checking their phone, this has knock on consequences for office design and consequently the cost of office space.

Summary

Bathrooms are designed for going to the lavatory. If they are designed to block phone and wi-fi signals they will operate more effectively for their intended purpose.

Albert Pierrepoint born on this day in 1905. His father and his uncle were executioners, part time hangmen. As a child Albert wrote in a school exercise “When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner”. He achieved his goal.

He began his career as executioner in Dublin. He was assistant executioner to his uncle in the Hanging of Patrick McDermott in Mountjoy Gaol in 1932.

In the course of his career he hanged over 400 people. His total was boosted by the war. Pierrepoint carried out the executions of 200 war criminals in Germany between 1945 and 1950.

William Joyce (lord Haw Haw) the Irish born Nazi propagandist was one of his “customers”. Pierrepoint also had the distinction to hang both the wrongly convicted Timothy Evans and the rightly convicted serial killer John Christie for the murder of Evans wife in an illegal abortion. The events were portrayed in the film “10 Rillington Place”

Pierrepoint also hanged the last man to be executed in Ireland, Michael Manning (1954) and the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Ruth Ellis (1955). He resigned in 1956. The British Home Office asked him to reconsider as he was the “most efficient and swiftest executioner in British history”.

Despite working as a hangman for over 20 years Pierrepoint observed that hanging was not a deterrent.

And now some selected verses from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” by prisoner C33, the pen name adopted by Oscar Wilde after his release from prison.

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

II

The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer’s collar take
His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!

IV

There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far too wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man’s face was white with fear,
And that man’s face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.

Originally the concept of nominative determinism arose as a humorous feedback thread in New Scientist Magazine as readers observed how authors names reflected their research topics. Polar explorations by Daniel Snowman, a urology article by Splatt and Weedon.

This was a build from joke books of my youth. “The Tower of Pisa” by Eileen Over. “Legal Jurisprudence” by Argue and Phibbs. “Treating Tennis Injuries” by Savage, Racquet and Ball. There are lot of those: Funny books and authors

Erik the Red, who founded the Viking colony on Iceland wanted to keep the island for his own people. To dissuade other Norsemen from following he gave his colony an unattractive name. His son, Lief Eriksson, did the opposite in an attempt to encourage colonists to settle in his new discovery, Greenland.

Some people have begun to take nominative determinism more seriously. Some pointed to the fact that many names originated in the middle ages when people were named for their trade, and families stayed within a trade. Thatchers roofed houses. Wrights made wheels. Smiths beat metal. Fletchers made arrows. Is there a genetic disposition to excellence in a field of endeavour?

A family that has genetically poor eyesight will not survive long in the lacemaking trade. Do genetic traits in agility, intelligence, strength etc contribute to our aptitude for certain careers?

Then there is the environment. The child of a musician is raised in a world of music practice, has a learned knowledge of what harmonies work well, grows up playing with musical instruments. Learning to read music comes easier than learning to read language. Smiths know the techniques for tempering steel, learned over many generations and passed orally from Father to Son. Fletchers know how to make good glue. Dyers know the recipes for pigments that stain cloth but do not fade rapidly in sunlight. Tanners are used to the smell of piss and shit.

So in the modern world, when we are socially mobile, does our heritage still carry cues to our abilities. Is nominative determinism a real thing?

For me the funniest example of nominative determinism is given in Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22. With a surname of Major a vindictive father stepped in when his wife was comatose after childbirth and named his son Major Major Major. The child is drafted into the US Air Force in WW2 as Private Major Major Major. It is only the work of a short time and standard military bureaucracy before the Private is promoted, by clerical error, and assigned as Major Major Major Major.

Miniver Cheevy; by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.